In this description, we will take an image from photo to black and white line art. There are probably some extra steps, but this shows how it was actually done.

Start with a photo

http://flickr.com/photos/connors934/325166642/in/photostream/

Open it in gimp

Adjust the image with a filter

I used the find edges, edges filter

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/173/377037172_b141715384.jpg

Convert the image to black and white Image, mode, black and white

All the color will be wiped out, but you need to turn it back into an rgb image to do the next step.

Adjust the brightness and contrast until the grays are gone and there are lines

http://flickr.com/photos/connors934/371776789/

Print the image

Go over the image with a marker

Add some variety to the image by having some lines thick and others thin

I then cut the image as a silkscreen stencil using a utility knife

http://flickr.com/photos/connors934/371093428/in/set-72157594504089055/

After determining that I might not have the right chemicals, or the stencil might be old, I decided to scan the stencil rather than wrecking it. This will allow me to work with the image without damaging the on of a kind stencil.

The scan was a color scan, black and white was too irregular.

http://flickr.com/photos/connors934/377015947/

crop the image

I put the image on a wiki for online storage because the computer didn't have gimp.

The image also got uploaded to flickr for archiving purposes.

convert the image to black and white

Invert the values

not quite an instant black and white conversion, but it has some human touch.

http://flickr.com/photos/connors934/377019894/